John Porte

Developing an agent-based training simulation using game and virtual reality software: experience report

This paper reports our usage of game and virtual reality technology to build a risk training simulation inhabited by agents. We describe the design and issues in the development of the Risk Management Module using UrealEd 3.0 game toolkit and the BOrder Security System using Vizard so that others with similar goals might be informed by our experiences.

Effects of depth cues on simulator sickness

In this paper, we discuss our experimental results on Simulator Sickness (SS). A series of experiments were conducted in our Virtual Reality (VR) Lab. Our aim was to investigate the correlations between the perception of depth and the feeling of discomfort, as well as the role of gameplay regarding the familiarity of the viewer with computer games in the feeling of discomfort. Participants were immersed in two different stereoscopic landscapes projected on a semi-cylindrical screen. The results indicate that participants have felt simulator sickness more intensely in the landscape where they perceived less depth cues. We also observed that participants who often played computer games felt simulator sickness less than others.

Blending two virtual realities: Using Google Glass to explore a virtual reality model of the Villa of Good Fortune at Olynthus

In cultural heritage contexts, augmented reality offers the benefit of superimposing information or a recreation of a historical site or event on the view of the current site to add detail or bring it to life by restoring it to its original state or a selected time period. However, this still requires one to visit the site. An alternative to being there is a virtual reality recreation of the site that can be viewed via head mounted displays such as the Oculus Rift or life size display systems. However, what if one wants to clearly separate the past from the present or separate the information about the item from the item itself. In this study we have recreated a Virtual Reality model of a two-storey Greek Villa, the Villa of Good Fortune at Olynthus, which can be explored using Unity 5 Game technology. To enable the villa to be visited in a museum-like fashion, we provide information about the objects and villa through the additional use of Google Glass. As a result we have two layers of virtual reality: the virtual villa and the information about the villa in the Google Glass. We conducted a pilot to test the technology in use with novices and to look at the effectiveness of the Glass in helping users remember information it supplies compared to reading text on information cards in the virtual world. The pilot study found that 83% of participants preferred receiving the information via the Google Glass than in the virtual world, even though half of them found the information hard to read using the Glass. Further research is needed to determine whether either method improves cognitive function, memory recall or long-term understanding of the content.